Legal Question in Sexual Harassment in Tennessee
Gay comments/ offensiveslurs by manager
I recently started working in a service department and immediately the service manager started introducing me to others and making comments such as ''watch this guy(pointing to the individual he was introducing me to), he will grab your private parts''. Then in the following days would ask if someone ''had touched my private parts''. On one occasion I asked the service manager where I would be working the following day, he stated a company's name followed by the remark ''that is where we send all the gay guys''. The last straw was when me and another individual went out of town and stayed the night and the service manager came to the site the next day and asked me in front of some people working onsite if the other worker had touched my privates the night before. I complained to him the next week at the shop about it and the following week to our regional manager. The regional manager stated he had heard sexually offensive remarks there before and had thought about the possibility of complaints/lawsuits, but did not try to stop the remarks. That was last week. Yesterday another employee drew a crying baby face saying waaah waaah at my work area. Obviously talk had made it to the employees of what was happening. What should I do?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Gay comments/ offensiveslurs by manager
My standard reply to questions about employment law is that Tennessee is an "at will" state, meaning employees can be discharged at the will of the employer with or without cause. Therefore, the best "justice" is for badly treated employees to vote with their feet and just start a new job somewhere giving the abusive employer little or no advanced notice.
If you are not fortunate enough to have another competitor for whom you can work, then I would advise you that you have the elements of a sexual harassment lawsuit under the U.S. Civil Rights Act.
The problem is that you don't have money to pay an attorney to represent you, so you need to look for a cheaper alternative. Legal aid groups I believe can accept cases on sexual harassment.
You may know that the U.S. Supreme Court in 1998 considered a case of same gender sexual harassment by an employer and held the conduct was actionable. In that case, men working on an off-shore oil platform got a little gamey and started joking that they wanted to fool around with one of their coworkers as if he was a woman. The teasing escalated into a physical assault in the shower room of the living quarters on the offshore platform. The man was not raped as you might have guessed, but one coworker did partially shove a bar of soap inside his bottom.
A Tennessee trial judge might conclude your fact pattern is different, because there were no physical assaults, but the U.S. Supreme Court precedents on what constitutes offensive sexual harassment words would definitely be binding on a court in Tennessee.
I can help you proceed in court on your own, if you choose to go that route.
Dr. Michael A. S. Guth
http://riskmgmt.biz/prose.htm
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